Posted on 10/23/2013 1:04:43 PM PDT by Blood of Tyrants
Heres a penny for your thoughts: One red cent couldve landed you the Navys first supercarrier, the decommissioned Forrestal.
The U.S. Navy sold the 1,067-foot behemoth to a Texas company, All Star Metals, to be dismantled, scrapped and recycled, Navy officials announced. It's an inauspicious fate for a ship with a colorful and tragic history. It's perhaps best known for a 1967 incident in which stray voltage triggered an accidental explosion that struck a plane on the flight deck whose cockpit was occupied by a young John McCain. A chain reaction of blasts and fires ultimately killed 134 men and injured more than 300.
But its rich past and nearly four decades of service are not enough to spare it. The Navy tried to donate the historic ship for use as a memorial or a museum, but no viable applications were received.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
think of what we would have been saved from if the missile would’ve hit McCain. what a wonderful world it would be.
It was very well studied and understood. They understood very well how it happened.
LOL...I served on the JFK and we called her the Forestfire. But it in no way was meant disrespectfully. It was frivolous.
You always kept in mind that it coulda been you.
Well, I wish the old girl could have become a museum, but as she served in war, so too will she serve in peace. Her hull and fixtures will generate a lot of income for the scrap industry, and probably end putting food on a lot of families’ tables as a result. Certainly, I can live with that.
When I was on the JFK, we often called her “The Big John”, and it wasn’t meant affectionately (although there were cases when it was...)
Sailors often refer in a derogatory fashion to their own ship, but...don’t YOU do it!
I’d hoped the City of San Diego would have preserved the USS CONSTELLAION (CV-64) vice USS MIDWAY (CV-41). I heard that USS SARATOGA (CV-60) is too far gone for a museum ship. That leaves CV-64 and USS JOHN F. KENNEDY (CV-67).
It would make much more sense to keep it afloat and sell offshore housing real cheap.
I saw the Saratoga berthed next to the USS Iowa in Newport RI a few years back, and while the Iowa looked like it could have put to sea, the Saratoga looked sad.
The oxidized haze gray paint had that chalky-whitish look to it, and there was something that looked derelict about her.
Sad.
Just so long as the scrap company isn’t owned by the Chinese.
That’s a LOT of metal back in circulation.
yes, the fid..
the First In Defense...
USS Forrestal, CV 59...
‘79 thru ‘80...
i was with carrier air wing 17..
vaq 133..
plane captain night shift..
worked the flight deck..
The Alot is Better Than You at Everything
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html
No. The first time I heard it was from a couple of guys who were serving aboard her.
Some people actually have senses of humor - even in the face of tragic circumstances.
No, the “Forestfire” was has EVERYONE referred to the Forestall. Black humor.
I served as weapons officer on a destroyer in the early eighties out of Mayport. We were in the Forrestal’s carrier group several times during that period (alternating with the Independence). We often referred to the Forrestal as “Forest Fire” in the ward room. A bit disrespectful now looking back on it...
Actually I look at it as a safety thing. The Forestall fire was started by human error, never forget. If it had been a bomb strike from any enemy attack then that would be disrespectful IMO.
Sailors do have names for ships, even their own, sometimes nice, sometimes not.
Sailors on the USS Intrepid called her “The Evil I”...:)
And there was a lot of lost men on that one.
USS Puget Sound was refereed to as the Pubic Mound (Re: Female sailors all over the place on that tub)
OMG...that’s too funny!
“Hey sailor, what ship you from...?”
Ping to an old thread; fyi, lest we forget.
Check out # 8 , # 14 .
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